LABORATORY CULTIVATION OF CLASTODERMA DEBARYANUM

Mc Manus , Sister Mary Annunciata , R.S.M. (Mount Mercy Coll., Cedar Rapids, Iowa.) Laboratory cultivation of Clastoderma debaryanum. Amer. Jour. Bot. 48(10): 884–888. Illus. 1961.—Clastoderma debaryanum has been cultivated on laboratory media for the first time and its life cycle studied. Spores germinate to produce a single protoplast which may remain a myxamoeba or may become a swarm cell. The swarm cells fuse in pairs to form a zygote, which grows into a microscopic, spherical plasmodium. The plasmodium never develops a network of veins and shows only irregular streaming. At maturity each plasmodium gives rise to 1 sporangium. There is always a sphere of gelatinous material about 4/5 the distance up the stalk, which appears late in the development of the sporangium, and which dries to become a wrinkled enlargement. The peridium dehisces early, leaving only a few plates attached to some of the peripheral tips of the capillitial twigs, and a peridial collar. The solid capillitium branches from the tip of a very short columella.